Articles from kenytiger

Eighty-seven-year-old Dan Mayers played the following game during the 2008 World Open in Philadelphia. The 218-player Under 2000 section was, as it always is, a brutal competition.
"After a win in the first round, Dan dropped five in a row. A les...

Parimarjan Negi (1993-) is a 15-year-old chess prodigy from India. In July 2005, he earned his third and final International Master norm at the Sort International Open Chess Tournament in Sort, Spain. On July 2006, at the tender age of 13 years, 4...

Alexander Alekhine had a brother, Alexey (1888-1939), four years older, who took the game of Chess seriously. When Alexey was 13 he made a draw with Harry Nelson Pillsbury in a 22-board blindfold simultaneous in Moscow. As a tasty sample of his ta...

It is amazing how time flies. I have been in Chess.com a little over a year, it has been a year of many joyful Chess victories as well as devastating and frustrating losses. I have also enjoyed the privilege of meeting wonderful people in the US a...

In this classic game played in 1970, Italian International Master Stefano Tatai (1938-) plays with abandon and talent to reach the enemy King. When the scope of a Bishop is cut, other dangerous lines are opened.

This is an interesting game in which Black trades his Queen for three minor pieces and then goes for the kill. This game shows that sometimes the powerful lady is no match for the combinative powers of a Knight and two Bishops. In t...

Kristian Skold from Stockholm, Sweden, was Swedish Chess Champion in 1949, 1950, 1959 and 1963. He gives us a tasty demonstration of his talent in the following game played in 1963. He sacrifices all his Queen-side pawns and obtains a decisiv...

In 1965, Hungarian Grandmaster Lajos Portisch plays the Black pieces against Mikhail Tal. The soviet titan unleashes an all-out attack pushing his opponent against the ropes. Portish ends up with a Rook, Knight and Bi...

Fischer reverts to an opening variation he used to play when he was twelve years old. One wonders why he ever stopped.
This game shows why Bobby has been called "The greatest Champion that ever lived."

In this famous game, Unzicker follows for a long time a game Tal played against Fischer some time before. In that game, Black had the better of the opening. Unzicker, one would think, has some improvement, but only proves how bad White's game real...

Albéric O'Kelly de Galway ( 1911-1980), was a Belgian Grandmaster in 1956 and an International Correspondence Grandmaster in 1962, most famous for being the third ICCF World Champion in correspondence chess between 1959 and 1...

In this classic game from the US Championship of 1962, James Sherwin dares Bobby to a battle of book knowledge in a obscure variation of the Sicilian. There may be some line Fischer doesn't know, but this isn't it.

Shortly after World War I, a group of players come into prominence whose ideas are to cause a considerable revision in chess thinking. Richard Reti (1889-1929) and Gyula Breyer (1894-1921) lead the school. Both die young, Breyer at twenty sev...

Here is a game played a long time ago between the first official World Champion William Steinitz and the father of the Soviet School and Master of Attack, Mikhail Tchigorin. Steinitz castles in the opposite wing on move 19, making it very clear th...

Johannes Zukertort (1842-1888), was a remarkable man. Born in Riga and educated in Germany, he was the all-time Renaissance man of chess. A linguist, he spoke eleven languages fluently and had, in addition, a working knowledge of Arabic, Turk...

Paul Morphy, the "Pride and Sorrow" of chess, gives us another outstanding performance in this game played in 1858. Al Horowitz considers this game in his "Golden Treasury of Chess" as "The most brilliant of Morphy&qu...

In the following Ruy Lopez, Sidney Norman Bernstein of New York (1911-1992), author of "Combat: My 50 Years at the Chessboard" gives us a tasty demonstration of his amazing chess abilities. After move 16, he manages to separate...

Few of us realize that one of the best weapons against an attack is to play for exchange of pieces. An attack flourishes on complications, on the efforts of powerfully posted pieces aimed at cramped positions. Every time you simplify, you remove a...

Tigran Petrosian comes to the world in a working-class family in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia in 1929. He learns Chess as a youth and quickly moves up the classification ladder. He confirms his rank of candidate-master in 1945 in the Tbilisi Champi...

When the 24th USSR Championship opened in Moscow in February 1957, it never occurred to anyone that Mikhail Tal, the youngest contender, might possibly take first prize. Discussing the prospects of this twenty-year-old Riga University student, che...

"Nothing is so conducive to overconfidence in Chess as winning some material from your opponent. And, by the same token, nothing is so discouraging as losing back that material, or more, through some ill-considered, overconfident move. Such m...

Here is a game for you sacrifice lovers to enjoy. White makes one sacrifice after another to have the enemy King exactly where he wants him. Notice the brilliant 19.Bg6+, a move combined with confident and bad intentions, after which, Black can pr...

Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946), became the fourth World Champion after defeating the invincible Jose Raul Capablanca in 1927. The result of this match surprised almost everyone since Capablanca was the widely favorite to win (Alekhi...

Gyula Breyer (1893-1921) was a Hungarian Chess player. He was a leading member of the Hypermodern school of chess theory, which favored controlling the center with pieces on the wings. In 1912 Breyer won the Hungarian Championship i...

Here is a good miniature from the late 1800's that shows an amazing display of chess mastery. New York State Champion Julius Finn defeats his opponent in a beautiful way. In the final position, White offers his Rook in exchange for the Black K...